INTRODUCTION. 
that we can best recall ourselves to the lovely possibilities of rock- 
work in itself; and then proceed, upon this realisation, to graft 
our own zeal and knowledge in the cultivation of plants. Pro- 
portion, unity, restraint, are most especially to be studied. See 
that your rock-work, whether bank or mound or gorge, is not 
disjointed in effect, but so ordered that each rock looks as if it 
belonged to the next, and had been its bed-fellow since the 
foundations of the hills were laid. See that an effect of linked 
and unforced naturalness is achieved ; see that there is no sense 
of ostentation or strenuous artificial violence, and above all, see 
that from every aspect the planes, clifis, and slopes of your com- 
pilation give you a feeling of calm, of real mevitability and 
balance. Within these rules all schemes are good, and every 
creator must create his own. It is far better that he should do 
this for himself, and make errors, and learn by them, than commit 
the whole building to some one else, who will merely run up an ex- 
pensive soulless fabric on conventional commercial lines. (Unless, 
indeed, he be an artist; for rock-garden building is one of the 
subtlest of high arts, all the subtler for seeming so simple and 
natural in its results, which in reality are only to be attained, 
not by the rough-and-ready rule of thumb that its unforced look 
suggests, but on those most delicate and deep-sought of all laws, 
that always prove to govern anything in art that looks like an- 
archy.) The task of learning is easy—all the important rules have 
been given; by contemplating garden after garden in their light, 
the would-be builder will soon learn the secret of that serene and 
placidly harmonious look that marks the well-built rock-garden, 
quite apart from the plants that adorn it. To talk of imitating 
nature, as so many vainly do, is to encourage a rank and empty 
delusion. To make a thing look “ natural” is by no means to 
imitate nature. Nature often looks more artificial than the worst 
forms of artificial art; nature in the mountains is often chaotic, 
bald, dreary, and hideous in the highest degree. By making 
a rock-garden look natural, then, we merely mean that it must 
have a firm and effortless harmony of hill or vale, cliff or slope. 
Conventionally “natural” effects are best unaimed at—rock- 
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